A father/daughter journey into the past

 I wish I could give a ringing endorsement to Treasure, director Julia von Heinz's story about a Jewish woman who travels with her father to Poland during the 1990s. Unfortunately, the movie's obvious sincerity is tempered by too many notes of sentimentality. Sentiment seems out-of-place in a story about a widowed Holocaust survivor (Stephen Fry) and his daughter (Lena Dunham), a journalist who wants to learn about her family's past. In adapting a 2001 novel by Lily Brett, von Heinz evokes the pain of the Holocaust but the movie winds up scratching the surface -- which is not to say that some of those scratches don't sting. Fry's Edek Rothwax and Dunham's Ruth Rothwax visit Poland soon after the Russian grasp of its former satellite countries has faded. Dad, who insisted on accompanying his daughter, hires a driver (Zbignew Zamachowski) because Polish trains elicit too many memories of the German transports that took his relatives to death camps. Von Heinz draws the movie's father/ daughter conflict in less than tempestuous terms. Fry's portrayal of Edek borders on the folksy, and Dunham's playing a character who doesn't have a firm grasp on her identity. A meeting with the Poles who occupy the apartment where Edek grew up can't quite embody the difficulties some Poles have with Jewish visitors. It needed more development.  I can't say that I wasn't moved by Treasure. But as someone who has traveled to Poland and visited some of the same places as this father/daughter duo, I expected more from a film that's tackling the pained relationship of a parent who wants to protect himself and his daughter from an indigestible and horrific past. 

She's stuck in a post-collegiate limbo

Had the late Eric Rohmer been born a woman in contemporary America, he might have made a movie as self-consciously small as Tiny Furniture, a quietly engaging portrait of life in TriBeCa as lived by a recent college grad. * After returning home from college, Aura (Lena Dunham) moves in with her mom (Laurie Simmons) and her younger sister (Grace Dunham). Blood relations dominate both on and off screen: Simmons is the real mother of Lena Dunham, who also directed Tiny Furniture. Grace is her real sister. * Casual, funny and observant, Tiny Furniture may feel slight compared to more robust comedies, but its narrowness fits the sliver of life Dunham is intent on observing. Tiny Furniture is a low-consequence movie that perfectly captures a transitional moment. * The movie brings a variety of characters into Aura's narrowly defined world. It doesn't take long for Aura to hook up with a childhood friend played by the hilariously overdramatic Jemima Kirke. She also tries to establish relationships with a young You Tube sensation (David Call) and a chef (Alex Karpovsky) who works at the restaurant where Aura lands a job as a hostess. * In Tiny Furniture, Dunham distinguishes herself with intelligence and humor, not to mention a great ear for the kind of dialogue spoken by people who are well practiced in cleverness. In fact, Aura might be a prime example of a generation whose cleverness constitutes its greatest accomplishment. * Don't take that as a knock. Dunham shows little inclination to paper over the pretensions, shallowness and self-absorption of lives as yet unsullied by significant events. * True to its title, Tiny Furniture is a small curiosity, a movie made by someone who clearly knows the scene in which she skillfully immerses us. * Put another way, Tiny Furniture answers a question I hadn't really thought about before: What happens when smart people have nothing much to be smart about?